When the boys eye that plate on the counter, when they ask if they can have more figs, I say yes.

I say yes.

And Christ? He inspects our lives for more than intentions; He intends for intimacy.

He searches the limbs not for leaves — not leaving for conferences or for meetings or for front seats. He looks along the leaves for the love.

For the seed that swells with the Spirit, the faith that unfurls, the flower that unfolds into fruit. Can belief ever be barren? Doesn’t belief always mean living in the Beloved? Living like the Beloved?

Shalom breaks her fig open and I can see all the seeds, all this possibility.

“They’re so sweet.” She eats hers slow.

I clear the counter.

What if you’re the one feeling dry and brittle?

What if all you feel like you ever bear is…. frustrated kids and edgy words and a whole string of “grin and bear it days”?

What if you’re the one who feels like you’re withering right up?

I move the plate of figs off the table and it’s there.

The silhouette of the the Bent Beloved, all tenderness.

Him leaving the withered fig tree to lay down on the worn Tree so all the weary can revive.

And me, this woman too often like Aaron’s rod, dry and brittle, who just has to lay everything about before the Lord —

These brittle, dry days — they can be kindle for burning bushes and God can come upon the dry bones and they can bud and blossom. And we can eat almonds and taste miraculous fruit from limbs just surrendered.

After Palm Sunday and before Good Friday, that’s what we eat — the almonds and the figs and the fruit, because by Grace, God can get a fig out of even this dry stick. Levi sets out the third bowl.

A small dish of toothpicks. Dry, like dead trees.

“It’s what we’ll do when we repent.” He tells my Mama when she stops in. He shows her, holding up this grapevine wreath, this wood withered and wound.

“These wreaths that we made from the vines back in the woods? Every time we need to repent this Holy Week,” he reaches for the bowl… ” — we’ll slip in one of these sticks.”

“Yes,” she nods.

“Yes, exactly.”

I’m fingering the sharp edge of one brittle point.

And I go first.

I slip in a toothpick thorn, repenting of fruit that isn’t and believing in Him who is, and it’s there in these hands, this snapped, withered wood that will bear the impossible life and right everything again.

This hope encircling like a crown…

: : : :

Three Bowls & a Crown of Thorns :

A Holy Week Activity

Three Bowls & a Crown of Thorns :

Items Needed:

1. Figs in a bowl2. Almonds in a bowl3. Toothpicks, tea or coffee stained in a bowl4. a grapevine wreath, crowned-sized

Set the Three Bowls (figs, almonds, toothpicks) & a Crown of Thorns on a table during Holy Week.

And the first fruit is to believe that Jesus Christ is our Saviour, that without Him, there is no fruit. Have a time of personal and family reflection: What are the fruits of the Spirit? How does my life bear each of the fruits of the Spirit?

Twenty-One Grains of Wheat | The View From Herea needed read: "...we don’t have the luxury of ignoring the call, because to not choose is to choose. The seeds have been planted, and the harvest will come. Will we be part of it?" @JeanneDamoff

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